Quick disclaimer. My six months of numbers are a little dated – the last quarter of 2008 and first quarter of 2009.

The e-newsletter, web page, and a blog received the majority of views during each month so I just looked at those sources. I left the e-newsletter numbers out as well because I wanted to understand whether the e-newsletter really increased the number of web page and blog views. So I focused on those two numbers. And I looked at the six-day period from when the e-newsletter was sent. Over the course of the typical 30-day month, those six days are 20 percent.

A copy of the e-newsletter was kept on the website and many articles were posted on the site as well. While each open and click could be listed as a page view, I only measured hits on the index page. The newsletter offered the chance to go to my organization’s “home page” a link to the index page – and a number of people did so. In the six days after an e-mail (20 percent of a month) we always had more than 20 percent of our monthly hits – as high as 34 percent in the final month that I tracked. The main web page generated 29.5 percent of its hits in the 20 percent of the month after an e-newsletter.

This trend was even more obvious in the blog hits. We launched the blog on WordPress.com in September, added a link to our web page late in that month, and began to promote the blog in the e-newsletter in October. The concept of visiting the blog was new to stakeholders throughout this period, and the monthly e-mail provided a great reminder and driver to the blog.

During half of the months studied, the blog received more than half of its page views in the 6 days immediately after the e-mail. While this isn’t an 80/20 split, overall the blog received 49.7 percent of its traffic in the 20 percent of the time following an monthly e-mail.

Content was likely one of the main reasons the blog fared better than the web page in the days after the e-mail. But the takeaway is the same. When planning communications, include something regular to provide your audience with a gentle reminder that you’re there. E-mail is deleted too easily and too regularly – especially when you lean too heavily on it. But e-mail is low-cost and unobtrusive enough that it can give your readers a push to get more information about you.

I work at a place that’s pushing itself into many of these networks. I’ve helped to shepherd and create our own little area with the idea of being part of the conversation, and I’ve been approached with questions about how other offices can do what we do. I – and a few other folks (who get it) in other departments – spend time checking in on unofficial pages just to monitor. But there’s no institutionally organized (or if there is, there’s no lead dog).

There’s too high a cost to not be a part of these conversations – to not standing in these rooms. We’re trying to figure out who grabbed some of the branded real estate and created some of the initial pages and profiles. In a way, this really forces us to be part of the conversation – to be respectful of the community norm of not being over the top in our promotion.

Rachel wrote about the merit of becoming the go-to office for other departments interested in creating profiles on the various networks. The larger gain is in creating the dominant profile. Some of our profiles that weren’t the first created on a site are lost beneath the initial profiles. This hasn’t been a problem, and we continue to watch for any issues. But we’re faced with creating a series of profiles that tie together under one theme – something that takes time and the focus of a handful of people in disparate offices.

One of the overstated new rules is the need to give up control. Don’t think you’ll pull everyone under your page. But do be as friendly and as helpful as possible – a good community member – to get others to look for leadership. You can run as lead dog, but you can’t rein in others unless the executives decree it. That’s the easiest way to get someone to set up a spoof page – one that you can’t control and one likely to draw lots of attention.

Stay dominant by being open to others and making it easy for everyone to contribute to your work and profile.

Stats are all over the place about how many messages a person receives in a normal day. Lots of studies have talked about this saturation.

How many people are receiving the messages? How many of the 37 million-plus words written on WordPress or its platforms (as of my writing this) are read?

That’s what this blog is (now – updated 11:10 p.m.) about.

In a time of user-generated content, can all of the stuff being created actually be meaningfully consumed? How – without spamming everyone who’s a friend, connection, or follower – can I get my message distributed. And am I sending the best message to them?